Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle Part 58

How are they at Hunsworth yet? It is no use saying whether I am solitary or not; I drive on very well, and papa continues pretty well.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

I print the next letter here because, although it contains no reference to Mr. Nicholls, it has a bearing upon the letter following it. Dr.

Wheelwright shared Mr. Bronte's infirmity of defective eyesight.

TO MISS LAEt.i.tIA WHEELWRIGHT

'HAWORTH, _April_ 12_th_, 1852.

'DEAR LAEt.i.tIA,--Your last letter gave me much concern. I had hoped you were long ere this restored to your usual health, and it both pained and surprised me to hear that you still suffer so much from debility. I cannot help thinking your const.i.tution is naturally sound and healthy. Can it be the air of London which disagrees with you? For myself, I struggled through the winter and the early part of spring often with great difficulty. My friend stayed with me a few days in the early part of January--she could not be spared longer. I was better during her visit, but had a relapse soon after she left me, which reduced my strength very much. It cannot be denied that the solitude of my position fearfully aggravated its other evils. Some long, stormy days and nights there were when I felt such a craving for support and companionship as I cannot express. Sleepless, I lay awake night after night; weak and unable to occupy myself, I sat in my chair day after day, the saddest memories my only company. It was a time I shall never forget, but G.o.d sent it and it must have been for the best.

'I am better now, and very grateful do I feel for the restoration of tolerable health; but, as if there was always to be some affliction, papa, who enjoyed wonderful health during the whole winter, is ailing with his spring attack of bronchitis. I earnestly trust it may pa.s.s over in the comparatively ameliorated form in which it has. .h.i.therto shown itself.

'Let me not forget to answer your question about the cataract. Tell your papa my father was seventy at the time he underwent an operation; he was most reluctant to try the experiment--could not believe that at his age and with his want of robust strength it would succeed. I was obliged to be very decided in the matter and to act entirely on my own responsibility. Nearly six years have now elapsed since the cataract was extracted (it was not merely depressed). He has never once, during that time, regretted the step, and a day seldom pa.s.ses that he does not express grat.i.tude and pleasure at the restoration of that inestimable privilege of vision whose loss he once knew.

'I hope the next tidings you hear of your brother Charles will be satisfactory for his parents' and sisters' sake as well as his own.

Your poor mamma has had many successive trials, and her uncomplaining resignation seems to offer us all an example worthy to be followed.

Remember me kindly to her, to your papa, and all your circle, and--Believe me, with best wishes to yourself, yours sincerely,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO REV. P. BRONTE, HAWORTH, YORKS

'CLIFF HOUSE, FILEY, _June_ 2_nd_, 1852.

'DEAR PAPA,--Thank you for your letter, which I was so glad to get that I think I must answer it by return of post. I had expected one yesterday, and was perhaps a little unreasonably anxious when disappointed, but the weather has been so very cold that I feared either you were ill or Martha worse. I hope Martha will take care of herself. I cannot help feeling a little uneasy about her.

'On the whole I get on very well here, but I have not bathed yet as I am told it is much too cold and too early in the season. The sea is very grand. Yesterday it was a somewhat unusually high tide, and I stood about an hour on the cliffs yesterday afternoon watching the tumbling in of great tawny turbid waves, that made the whole sh.o.r.e white with foam and filled the air with a sound hollower and deeper than thunder. There are so very few visitors at Filey yet that I and a few sea-birds and fishing-boats have often the whole expanse of sea, sh.o.r.e, and cliff to ourselves. When the tide is out the sands are wide, long, and smooth, and very pleasant to walk on. When the high tides are in, not a vestige of sand remains. I saw a great dog rush into the sea yesterday, and swim and bear up against the waves like a seal. I wonder what Flossy would say to that.

'On Sunday afternoon I went to a church which I should like Mr.

Nicholls to see. It was certainly not more than thrice the length and breadth of our pa.s.sage, floored with brick, the walls green with mould, the pews painted white, but the paint almost all worn off with time and decay. At one end there is a little gallery for the singers, and when these personages stood up to perform they all turned their backs upon the congregation, and the congregation turned _their_ backs on the pulpit and parson. The effect of this manoeuvre was so ludicrous, I could hardly help laughing; had Mr. Nicholls been there he certainly would have laughed out. Looking up at the gallery and seeing only the broad backs of the singers presented to their audience was excessively grotesque. There is a well-meaning but utterly inactive clergyman at Filey, and Methodists flourish.

'I cannot help enjoying Mr. b.u.t.terfield's defeat; and yet in one sense this is a bad state of things, calculated to make working people both discontented and insubordinate. Give my kind regards, dear papa, to Mr. Nicholls, Tabby, and Martha. Charge Martha to beware of draughts, and to get such help in her cleaning as she shall need. I hope you will continue well.--Believe me, your affectionate daughter,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_December_ 15_th_, 1852.

'DEAR ELLEN,--I return the note, which is highly characteristic, and not, I fear, of good omen for the comfort of your visit. There must be something wrong in herself as well as in her servants. I inclose another note which, taken in conjunction with the incident immediately preceding it, and with a long series of indications whose meaning I scarce ventured hitherto to interpret to myself, much less hint to any other, has left on my mind a feeling of deep concern.

This note you will see is from Mr. Nicholls.

'I know not whether you have ever observed him specially when staying here. Your perception is generally quick enough--_too_ quick, I have sometimes thought; yet as you never said anything, I restrained my own dim misgivings, which could not claim the sure guide of vision.

What papa has seen or guessed I will not inquire, though I may conjecture. He has minutely noticed all Mr. Nicholls's low spirits, all his threats of expatriation, all his symptoms of impaired health--noticed them with little sympathy and much indirect sarcasm.

On Monday evening Mr. Nicholls was here to tea. I vaguely felt without clearly seeing, as without seeing I have felt for some time, the meaning of his constant looks, and strange, feverish restraint.

After tea I withdrew to the dining-room as usual. As usual, Mr.

Nicholls sat with papa till between eight and nine o'clock; I then heard him open the parlour door as if going. I expected the clash of the front door. He stopped in the pa.s.sage; he tapped; like lightning it flashed on me what was coming. He entered; he stood before me.

What his words were you can guess; his manner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it. Shaking from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, vehemently, yet with difficulty, he made me for the first time feel what it costs a man to declare affection where he doubts response.

'The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like thus trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a kind of strange shock. He spoke of sufferings he had borne for months, of sufferings he could endure no longer, and craved leave for some hope. I could only entreat him to leave me then and promise a reply on the morrow. I asked him if he had spoken to papa. He said he dared not. I think I half led, half put him out of the room. When he was gone I immediately went to papa, and told him what had taken place. Agitation and anger disproportionate to the occasion ensued; if I had _loved_ Mr.

Nicholls, and had heard such epithets applied to him as were used, it would have transported me past my patience; as it was, my blood boiled with a sense of injustice. But papa worked himself into a state not to be trifled with: the veins on his temples started up like whip-cord, and his eyes became suddenly bloodshot. I made haste to promise that Mr. Nicholls should on the morrow have a distinct refusal.

'I wrote yesterday and got this note. There is no need to add to this statement any comment. Papa's vehement antipathy to the bare thought of any one thinking of me as a wife, and Mr. Nicholls's distress, both give me pain. Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained, but the poignant pity inspired by his state on Monday evening, by the hurried revelation of his sufferings for many months, is something galling and irksome. That he cared something for me, and wanted me to care for him, I have long suspected, but I did not know the degree or strength of his feelings.

Dear Nell, good-bye.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.

'I have letters from Sir J. K. Shuttleworth and Miss Martineau, but I cannot talk of them now.'

With this letter we see the tragedy beginning. Mr. Bronte, with his daughter's fame ringing in his ears, thought she should do better than marry a curate with a hundred pounds per annum. For once, and for the only time in his life there is reason to believe, his pa.s.sions were thoroughly aroused. It is to the honour of Mr. Nicholls, and says much for his magnanimity, that he has always maintained that Mr. Bronte was perfectly justified in the att.i.tude he adopted. His present feeling for Mr. Bronte is one of unbounded respect and reverence, and the occasional unfriendly references to his father-in-law have pained him perhaps even more than when he has been himself the victim.

'Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained.' A good deal has been made of this and other casual references of Charlotte Bronte to her slight affection for her future husband. Martha Brown, the servant, used in her latter days to say that Charlotte would come into the kitchen and ask her if it was right to marry a man one did not entirely love--and Martha Brown's esteem for Mr. Nicholls was very great.

But it is possible to make too much of all this. It is a commonplace of psychology to say that a woman's love is of slow growth. It is quite certain that Charlotte Bronte suffered much during this period of alienation and separation; that she alone secured Mr. Nicholls's return to Haworth, after his temporary estrangement from Mr. Bronte; and finally, that the months of her married life, prior to her last illness, were the happiest she was destined to know.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _December_ 18_th_, 1852.

'DEAR NELL,--You may well ask, how is it? for I am sure I don't know.

This business would seem to me like a dream, did not my reason tell me it has long been brewing. It puzzles me to comprehend how and whence comes this turbulence of feeling.

'You ask how papa demeans himself to Mr. Nicholls. I only wish you were here to see papa in his present mood: you would know something of him. He just treats him with a hardness not to be bent, and a contempt not to be propitiated. The two have had no interview as yet; all has been done by letter. Papa wrote, I must say, a most cruel note to Mr. Nicholls on Wednesday. In his state of mind and health (for the poor man is horrifying his landlady, Martha's mother, by entirely rejecting his meals) I felt that the blow must be parried, and I thought it right to accompany the pitiless despatch by a line to the effect that, while Mr. Nicholls must never expect me to reciprocate the feeling he had expressed, yet, at the same time, I wished to disclaim partic.i.p.ation in sentiments calculated to give him pain; and I exhorted him to maintain his courage and spirits. On receiving the two letters, he set off from home. Yesterday came the inclosed brief epistle.

'You must understand that a good share of papa's anger arises from the idea, not altogether groundless, that Mr. Nicholls has behaved with disingenuousness in so long concealing his aim. I am afraid also that papa thinks a little too much about his want of money; he says the match would be a degradation, that I should be throwing myself away, that he expects me, if I marry at all, to do very differently; in short, his manner of viewing the subject is on the whole far from being one in which I can sympathise. My own objections arise from a sense of incongruity and uncongeniality in feelings, tastes, principles.

'How are you getting on, dear Nell, and how are all at Brookroyd?

Remember me kindly to everybody.--Yours, wishing devoutly that papa would resume his tranquillity, and Mr. Nicholls his beef and pudding,

'C. BRONTE.

'I am glad to say that the incipient inflammation in papa's eye is disappearing.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_January_ 2_nd_, 1853.

'DEAR NELL,--I thought of you on New Year's night, and hope you got well over your formidable tea-making. I trust that Tuesday and Wednesday will also pa.s.s pleasantly. I am busy too in my little way preparing to go to London this week, a matter which necessitates some little application to the needle. I find it is quite necessary I should go to superintend the press, as Mr. Smith seems quite determined not to let the printing get on till I come. I have actually only received three proof-sheets since I was at Brookroyd.

Papa wants me to go too, to be out of the way, I suppose; but I am sorry for one other person whom n.o.body pities but me. Martha is bitter against him; John Brown says "he should like to shoot him."

They don't understand the nature of his feelings, but I see now what they are. He is one of those who attach themselves to very few, whose sensations are close and deep, like an underground stream, running strong, but in a narrow channel. He continues restless and ill; he carefully performs the occasional duty, but does not come near the church, procuring a subst.i.tute every Sunday. A few days since he wrote to papa requesting permission to withdraw his resignation. Papa answered that he should only do so on condition of giving his written promise never again to broach the obnoxious subject either to him or to me. This he has evaded doing, so the matter remains unsettled. I feel persuaded the termination will be his departure for Australia. Dear Nell, without loving him, I don't like to think of him suffering in solitude, and wish him anywhere so that he were happier. He and papa have never met or spoken yet. I am very glad to learn that your mother is pretty well, and also that the piece of challenged work is progressing. I hope you will not be called away to Norfolk before I come home: I should like you to pay a visit to Haworth first. Write again soon.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_March_ 4_th_, 1853.

'DEAR ELLEN,--We had the parsons to supper as well as to tea. Mr. N.